Please consult the 17 Jan 1979 Lecture from the series "Birth of
Biopolitics" on the topic of 'regimes of verediction':

pg 33

When I spoke of the coupling carried out in the 'eighteenth century
between a regime of truth and a new governmental reason, and the
connection of this with political economy, in no way did I mean that
there was the formation of a scientific and theoretical discourse of
political economy on one side, and then, on the other, those who
governed who were either seduced by this political economy, or forced to
take it into account by the pressure of this or that social group. What
I meant was that the market-which had been the privileged object of
governmental practice for a very long time and continued to be in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the regime of raison d'etat
and a mercantilism which precisely made commerce one of the major
instruments of the state's power-was now constituted as a site of
veridiction. And this is not simply or so much because we have entered
the age of a market economy-this is at once true, and. says nothing
exactly-and it is not because people wanted to produce the rational
theory of the marlcet-which is what they did, but it was not sufficient.
In fact, in order to reach an understanding of how the market, in its
reality, became a site of veridiction for governmental practice, we
would have to establish what I would call a polygonal or polyhedral
relationship between: the particular monetary situation ofthe eighteenth
century, with a new influx of gold on the one hand, and a relative
consistency of currencies on the other; a continuous economic and
demographic growth in the same period; intensification of agricultural
production;the access to governmental practice of a number of
technicians who brought with them both methods and instruments of
reflection; and finally a number of economic problems being given a
theoretical form.

In other words, I do not think we need to look for-and consequently I do
not think we can find-the cause* [* Foucault repeats the words,
stressing the article: the cause] of the constitution of the market as
an agency of veridiction. If we want to analyze this absolutely
fundamental phenomenon in the history of Western governmentality, this
irruption of the market as a principle of veridiction, we should simply
establish the intelligibility of this process by describing the
connections between the different phenomena I have just referred to.
This would involve showing how it became possible-that is to say, not
[pg 34] showing that it was necessary, which is a futile task anyway,
nor show ing that it is a possibility( un possihle), one possibility in
a determinate field of possibilities ... Let's say that what enables us
to make reality intelligible is simply showing that it was possible;
establishing the intelligibility of reality consists in showing its
possibility. Speaking in general terms, let's say that in this history
of a jurisdictional and then veridictional market we have one of those
innumerable intersections between jurisdiction and veridiction that is
undoubtedly a fundamental phenomenon in the history of the modern West.

It has been around these [questions] that I have tried to organize a
number of problems - with regard to madness, for example. The problem
was not to show that psychiatry was formed in the heads of psychiatrists
as a theory, or science, or discourse claiming scientific status, and
that this was concretized or applied in psychiatric hospitals. Nor was
it to show -how, at a certain moment, institutions -of confinement,
which had existed for a long time, secreted their own theory and
justifications in the discourse of psychiatrists. The problem was the
genesis of psychiatry on the basis of, and through institutions' of
confinement that were originally and basically articulated on mechanisms
of jurisdiction in the very broad sense-since there were police type of
jurisdictions, but for the present, at this level, it is not very
important-and which at a certain point and in conditions that precisely
had to be analyzed, were at the same time supported, relayed,
transformed, and shifted -by process of veridiction.

In the same way, studying penal institutions meant studying them first
of all as sites and forms where jurisdictional practice was predominant
and we can say autocratic. [It meant studying] how a certain practice of
veri diction was formed and developed in these penal institutions that
were fundamentally linked to a jurisdictional practice, and how this
veridictional practice-supported, of course, by criminology, psychology,
and so on, but this is not what is essential~began to install the
veridictional question at the very heart of modem penal practice, even
to the extent of creating difficulties for its jurisdiction, which was
the question of truth addressed to the criminal: Who are you? When penal
practice replaced the question: "What have you done?" with the question:
"Who are you?" you see the jurisdictional function of the penal [pg 35]
system being transformed, or doubled, or possibly undermined, by the
question of veridiction.

In the same way, studying the genealogy of the object "sexuality"
through a number of institutions meant trying to identify in things like
confessional practices, spiritllal direction, the medical relationship,
and so on, the moment when the exchange and cross-over took place
between a jurisdiction of sexual relations, defining the permitted and
the prohibited, and the veridiction of desire, in which the basic
armature of the object "sexuality" currently appears.

You can see that all these cases-whether it is the market, the
confessional, the psychiatric institution, or the prison-involve taking
up a history of truth under different angles, or rather, taking up a
history of truth that is coupled, from the start, with a history of law.
While the history of error linked to a history of prohibitions has been
attempted fairly frequently, I would propose undertaking a history of
truth coupled with a history of law. Obviously, a history of truth
should not be understood in the sense of a reconstruction of the genesis
of the true through the elimination or -rectification of errors; nor a
history of the true which would- constitute a historical succession of
rationalities established through the rectification or elimination of
ideologies. Nor would this history of truth be the description of
insular and autonomous systems of truth. It would involve the genealogy
of regimes of veri diction, that is to say, the constitution of a
particular right (droit) of truth on the basis of a legal situation, the
law (droit) and truth relationship finding its privileged expression in
discourse, the discourse in which law is formulated and in which what
can be true or false is formulated; the regime of veridiction, in fact,
is not a law (loi). of truth, [but] the set of rules enabling one to
establish which statements in a given discourse can be described as true
or false.

Undertaking the history of regimes of veridiction-and not the history of
truth, the history of error, or the history of ideology, etcetera
obviously means abandoning once again that well-known critique of
European rationality and its excesses, which has been constantly taken
up in various forms since the beginning of the nineteenth century. From
romanticism to the Frankfurt School,9 what has always been called into
question and challenged has been rationality with the weight of power
[pg 36] supposedly peculiar to it. Now the critique* [* The manuscript
adds, p. 10bis: "political"] of knowledge I would propose does not in
fact consist in denouncing what is continually-I was going to say
monotonously-oppressive under reason, for after all, believe me,
insanity (deraison) is just as· oppressive. Nor would this political
critique of knowledge consist in flushing out the presumption of power
in every truth affirmed, for again, believe me, there is just as much
abuse of power in the lie or error. The critique I propose consists in
determining under what conditions and with what effects a veridiction is
exercised, that is to say, once again, a type of formulation falling
under particular rules of verification and falsification. For example,
when I say that critique would consist in determining under what
conditions and with what.effects a veridiction is exercised, you can see
that the problem would not consist in saying: Look how oppressive
psychiatry is, because it is false. Nor would itcoilSistinbeing a little
more sophisticated and saying: Look how oppressive it is, because it is
true. It would consist in saying that the problem is to bring to light
the conditions that had to be met for it to be possible to hold a
discourse on madness-but the same would hold for delinquency and for
sex~that can be true or false according to the rules of medicine, say,
or of confession, psychology, or psychoanalysis.

In other words, to have political significance, analysis does not have
to focus on the genesis of truths or the memory of errors. What does it
matter when a science began to tell the truth? Recalling all the
erroneous things that doctors have been able to say about sex or madness
does us a fat lot of good ... I think that what is currently politically
important is to determine the regime of veridiction established at a
given moment that is precisely the on~ on the basis of which you can now
recognize, for example, that doctors in the nineteenth century said so
many stupid things about sex. What is important is the determination of
the regime of veridiction that enabled them to say and assert a number
of things as truths that it turns out we now know were perhaps not true
at all. This is the point, in fact, where historical analysis may have a
political significance. It is not so much the history of the true or the
history of the false as the history of veri diction which has a
political [pg 36] significance. That is what I wanted to say regarding
the question of the market or, let's say, of the connecting up of a
regime of truth to governmental practice.

-ac

Department of Comparative Studies
Ohio State University

a.e.leeds@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

ricky,

This doesn't speak the same language as the analytics, to be sure, but I
think for somewhat different reasons than you suggest. This is speaking
about *events* of speaker's truth-telling with respect to their possible
consequences, rather than the relationship of statements to truth. It is
possible to argue that Foucault would take such a non-situated relationship
of statement to truth to be a non-starter, but I wouldn't so argue; the
Order of Things, relativized to a historical horizon, takes statements in
just such a way.

However, it would certainly be correct to point out that Foucault is very
concerned with the ethical, political, even existential entanglements of
utterances claiming truth, and analytic philosophy doesn't much care about
this. But to do a really good comparison, we'd have to start looking at
analytic and Foucauldian ethical theory, which is whole 'nother game.

(For the sake of this thread, I'm translating the Greek *parrhesia*, which
is the topic of these lectures, as truth-telling, a translation that MF
himself uses more or less throughout the lectures.)

"Truth-telling is a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a
specific
relation to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life
through danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people
through criticism, and a specific relation to moral law through freedom and
duty. More precisely, truth-telling is a verbal activity in which a speaker
expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life becuse he
recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well
as himself). In truth telling, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses
frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the
risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery,
and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy. That then, quite
generally, is the positive meaning of the word *parrhesia*..." (19-20)

As mentioned above, this doesn't really speak the same language as the
analytics, as truth for Foucault is about so much more than the relation
between statement and "reality" or between series of statements. Truth can
never be dissociated from power and subjectivation, relations of forces.
I'm
not sure the analytics have anything to say on this. Comments above on
Foucault's "historical" or genealogical tack I think make this difference
very clear.

wrote:
Arnold Davidson also had an interesting bit in his introduction to F
and his Interlocutors about Foucault's scorning of his French
contemporaries for taking credit for discoveries that had already been
made by Anglo-American "analytic" philosophers some 20 years
previously. Strange that there seems to be marginal interest in
confronting F with a tradition he seemingly respected.

I was talking with a friend who is a grad student in analytic
philosophy and we were debating about the issue of "truth" in both
analytic and continental traditions. In the course of it, we came to

a

discussion of the merits of the correspondence theory of truth

versus

the coherence theory of truth. The former argues for the veracity of

a

statement to be tied to its referent empirical reality and how well

it

"describes" or "corresponds" to it (straightforward "truth"). The
latter tying veracity to a statement's relationship to other
connecting statements. Where exactly would Foucault fit between

these

two theories? Going by the Archaeology of Knowledge, I would say he
criscrosses the divide (though more accurately he could be described
as being Nietzschean about truth). But are there any analytically or
partly analytically trained people on here that might provide their
own views?

--
Chetan Vemuri
West Des Moines, IA
aryavartacnsrn@xxxxxxxxx
(319)-512-9318
"You say you want a Revolution! Well you know, we all want to change